Washington, D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - September 18, 2024) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against Rari Capital, Inc., a supposed decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, and its co-founders, Jai Bhavnani, Jack Lipstone, and David Lucid, for misleading investors and engaging in unregistered broker activity in connection with their operation of two blockchain-based investment platforms that, at their peak, collectively held crypto assets worth more than $1 billion. Rari Capital also settled SEC charges that it conducted unregistered offerings of three securities tied to those platforms. In a separate order, Rari Capital Infrastructure LLC, which took over operations from Rari Capital in 2022, settled charges that it engaged in unregistered securities offerings and unregistered broker activity.
According to the SEC’s complaint, Rari Capital offered two investment products, Earn pools and Fuse pools, which functioned like crypto asset investment funds, allowing investors to deposit crypto assets in lending pools, either managed by Rari (Earn) or user-created (Fuse), and earn returns from their investments. The SEC’s complaint alleges that investors in the pools received a token representing their interest in the pools and the right to receive profits earned by the pools. Certain Earn pool investors also received a governance token, called the Rari Governance Token, or RGT. By selling interests in these pools and RGT, the complaint alleges, Rari Capital conducted unregistered offers and sales of securities.
Furthermore, the SEC’s complaint alleges that Rari Capital and its co-founders falsely told investors that the Earn pools would automatically and autonomously rebalance their crypto assets into the highest yield-generating opportunities available when, in reality, the rebalancing mechanism often required manual input, which Rari Capital sometimes failed to initiate. The SEC also alleges that Rari Capital and its co-founders misleadingly touted the high annual percentage yield that investors would earn, but they failed to account for various fees and, ultimately, a significant percentage of Earn pool investors lost money on their investments.
Furthermore, the SEC alleges that Rari Capital and its co-founders engaged in unregistered broker activity through their operation of the Fuse platform.
The SEC’s separate order against Rari Capital Infrastructure finds that it took over operations of the Fuse platform around March 2022 and continued the unlawful offer and sale of Fuse pool interests as well as the performance of unregistered broker activities.
“We allege that Rari Capital and its co-founders misled investors about both the features and profitability of certain of the crypto asset investments Rari Capital offered, and acted as unregistered brokers,” said Monique C. Winkler, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office. “We will not be deterred by someone labeling a product as “decentralized” and “autonomous,” but instead will look beyond the labels to the economic realities, as we did here, and hold the individuals behind crypto products and platforms accountable when they harm investors and violate the federal securities laws.”
The SEC’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, charges Rari Capital, Bhavnani, Lipstone, and Lucid with various violations of the securities offering registration and antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the broker registration provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. To settle the Commission’s charges, Rari Capital and the three co-founders, without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations, consented to the entry of final judgments ordering various forms of relief, including permanent injunctions, conduct-based injunctions, civil penalties, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and equitable officer-and-director bars against the co-founders for a period of five years. The settlements are subject to court approval. The separate SEC order finds that Rari Capital Infrastructure violated the securities offering registration provisions of the Securities Act and the broker registration provisions of the Exchange Act. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, Rari Capital Infrastructure agreed to the entry of a cease-and-desist order against it.
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Madiha M. Zuberi and Erin E. Wilk of the Division of Enforcement’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit and was supervised by Jason H. Lee and David Zhou of the San Francisco Regional Office.
